Rachel Whiteread -Wednesday Lectures

Born in 1963 in Essex, Rachel Whiteread studied at the Brighton Polytechnic. Initially starting as a painter for the first few years she then grew ‘bored of the edges of the paper’ and transitioned into sculpture.

In 1993 Whiteread completed her sculpture ‘House’. She filled the entire inside of a house with concrete, then peeled off the outside of the house leaving the eerie concrete model of the inside of the house. The ‘house’ stood in solitary on an empty street, leaving reminders of the many memories that had once happened there now gone. For this sculpture in 1993 Rachel Whiteread received the annual Turner Award and was the first ever woman to win it. However the general people hated the sculpture, and that very same night she was voted the Worst Artist and was ‘awarded’ £40,000 outside the awards and told it would be burned if she didn’t accept it. She eventually agreed and gave away the money. Soon after the house was demolished. Later in her career she won a competition to design a holocaust memorial, for which she chose to fill the inside of a library building. Leaving the outside just as rows of books paperside out, to show the books that could have been written.

Overall I like the work of Rachel Whiteread. I appreciate the creativity, or lack there of , of the concept of creating a mould from basically any object and seeing that come together and to do it in such a powerful way. I feel like she was very harshly criticised by the community as her work was just so large scale and obvious in the area. Many people would give up after having so much thrown back in her face, the embarrassment of being awarded the worst artist award then forced to accept the money, paired with having to see your also highest awarded project be ripped down in front of your eyes. I would hate to loose my work in such a horrible way, just because others don’t like it.

I think I enjoy the mould making itself as its an imperfect perfect product. You may be able to tell what it is, or what there is an absence of, but the mould leaves it’s marks, years of scratches and tiny marks will leave indentations, memories on the sculpture created. Just the inside of the mundane products. One thing that I would like to attempt from right at the end of the documentary is paper making. Whiteread created some sculptures using shredded paper. Making art from the paper trail of the 1993 House. I like The recycling concept of art especially using the now unnecessary paper from all things connected to a now gone piece of work.